


Nought

by Anonymous



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe, BAMF Steve Harrington, BAMF Will Byers, Empathy, Good Babysitter Steve Harrington, Not Beta Read, Protective Steve Harrington, Psychic Vampirism, Steve Harrington Has Powers, Tags May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:55:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23737942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: People are disappearing in Hawkins, Steve's got blood on his lips and a sinking feeling that he might have bitten off a bit more than he can chew this time.Or: yet another Steve Has Powers AU that no one was asking for.
Comments: 37
Kudos: 208
Collections: Anonymous





	1. Chapter 1

There's something wrong with Mary.

Her family knows it clear as daylight, and yet not a thing they do can seem to put it right. Her father finds her curled on her bed, blue streaks under her eyes like bruises, staring listlessly at the wall, and all his attempts to rouse her are met with a blank stare. Her mother brings food to her room and takes away the untouched plate hours later; her anger at the waste melts away when she hears the wrenching sobs behind the door. Her sister rushes into her room as dawn bleeds the sky outside, but not even her frantic calls can rouse Mary as she shrieks and thrashes in her sheets, skin soaked in sweat as she babbles nonsense and claws at empty air.

They discuss it in hushed whispers at dinner, each trying to square the creature upstairs with the laughing girl who swept from their house half a year before. Her father speaks of her pride as she left them, the finest student in her class, best and brightest of their remote little town. Her mother remembers the endless letters telling of the joy and excitement of college, the praise her professors had for her potential. Her sister thinks of the notes scribbled at the end in their secret code, the lovestruck doodles about a boy in class with floppy curls and the deepest brown eyes.

They try to fit the puzzle pieces together, and come up blank.

And Mary, Mary chokes on her nightmares in silence, because she _can’t_. Can’t tell anyone about the heady whirlwind of university, so far from the dust and dullness of home, finally amongst learned people who understand her. Can’t tell anyone about the thrill when a professor tells her that the routine test her class performed days ago was in fact a screen for volunteers for a new project and she’s been selected for further evaluation. Can’t tell anyone about how her heart fluttered when Robbie took her hand as the car stopped outside the lab, how his cheeks dimpled as the man in white told everyone there what a great service they were performing for both their country and science.

Can’t tell them about sitting there with a blindfold pinching into her face while a tape scrolled gibberish through her ears and a boy sobbed in the room behind her. Of falling into bed with Robbie the day after coiling tubes had fed his veins with drugs and how he had clawed at his own face, shrieking that her thoughts were buzzing in his head and he had to get them _out_. Can’t tell them about Dr Brenner gently telling her to _listen_ to the static on the radio, that she had been doing so well, one of their most promising-

Can’t tell them of the day Robbie smiled vacantly across the table at her and drew the file across his own throat. Of barely being able to process signing the paperwork taping her mouth shut and being unceremoniously tossed out, all used up just as they were bringing fresh new minds in. Of sitting in a bathroom, bile stinging her throat as she dropped the heavy folds of her dress over the unmistakable curve of her belly, hiding it from everyone’s eyes including her own.

And then, the night when there was no more hiding. Just hours of agony, biting down on a towel in a locked bathroom as her body was wracked with cramps and her thighs ran red with blood. The suffocating terror when _it_ slipped from her, pink and wrinkled and wailing, and she felt her life bleeding into the cold. 

There...there wasn’t a choice. Not then. 

Perhaps there is a way that she can tell her father that she had wedged the door behind her, that part of her was hoping the cold and hunger would do what her own hands were too afraid for. Perhaps she can confess to her mother that she didn’t breathe free again until Lacey from the neighbouring dorm told her about the baby that had been taken down to the station, poor lamb, that she’d heard there was already a wealthy couple that had been to see him in the hospital and what a wicked world it was when someone could do that to their own kin? She can admit to her sister that her nightmares are filled with it all, the lab, the dark, and _him_ , that there are times when she dreams of her baby warm and safe in her arms with Robbie beside them, and times when she’s back in the bathroom, her last breath shuddering through her lungs as it _feeds_. 

But it doesn’t matter anymore. None of it does. She feels hollowed out, like someone’s reached into her and scraped it all away - the lab, Robbie, Dr Brenner, the baby - until there’s just the nightmares left. 

She can get over those, though. She can scrape enough of herself together to carry on. Not the woman that she was, but that doesn’t matter. That woman’s choices led her all the way to the lab, to that bathroom, and Mary will never let herself open that door again.

The life she builds seems as fragile to her as a pack of cards, but still she stacks it up, bit by bit; a safe, dull little job as secretary, marriage to the stuttering blond in the next office along, a house with a white fence around its tiny garden, two ordinary children safe in their beds. If she wakes up in the night with tears on her cheeks and a strange emptiness inside her, that’s no one’s business but her own. 

She wishes, sometimes, that she knew his name.

* * *

Steve knows something’s wrong as soon as he hears the roar of an engine outside. Too soon for any of the others to have come back, and too aggressively loud for any casual evening visitor.

But even he isn’t expecting the raw look of terror on Max’s face as she pulls away from the window. It’s her brother, she says, and all the bravado has slipped from her voice. It’s her brother and he’s going to kill them. 

Yeah, that’s a fucking no. These kids are some of the most annoying brats he’s ever had the misfortune to meet, but right now they’re _his_ responsibility. And Hargrove...Well. Steve still isn’t sure what’s _up_ with the guy and the coiled aggression behind their every interaction, but he isn’t about to have it explode at anyone else under his watch.

He tells them all to hunker down away from the windows and heads out to the porch. The night air feels colder than the season should warrant, strangely close on his skin. It sets his teeth on edge, but not nearly so much as the sight of Hargrove leaning against the side of his car, pale cigarette smoke curling into the air.

“Am I dreaming, or is that you, Harrington?”

Steve glares at him coldly, ignoring the unease building in his gut. This is so goddamn _stupid_. He’s just come back fresh from a junkyard of nightmares, and Hargrove is just some human asshole on the Byers’ property. There’s no reason why Steve shouldn’t be able to send him off without trouble, threaten to call the cops if he feels like making a scene. 

But the feeling of physical threat itches on his skin, like static before a thunderstorm, and he keeps his tone level. 

“Yeah, it’s me. Don’t cream your pants.”

Hargrove grins, light and lazy, but Steve can see the malice glittering black behind it. He still tries. No, he hasn’t seen Hargrove’s sister. Nope, quite sure. Small, redheaded, bit of a bitch (what the _fuck_ ), not around here, sorry. 

Hargrove cocks an eyebrow at him like Steve’s made some kind of tasteless joke. He’s got the heebie-jeebies from this situation, he says (funny, because that’s nothing on what Steve’s feeling in this particular moment). His little sister, missing all day, and she turns up in a stranger’s house with _Steve-_

But Steve barely registers the insinuation, because Hargrove’s eyes are suddenly alight with purpose, and he knows without even turning around that those little shits have just shown themselves at the window. 

The warning is enough to let him dodge Hargrove’s lunge, and he has the brief satisfaction of seeing the confusion on his face as his own momentum sends him staggering forward into empty air. But he whips around with a punch to Steve’s gut that sends him reeling back, and before he can suck in a breath, Hargrove’s up the steps and disappearing through the open door.

The _kids_.

He bursts through the door, just in time to see Hargrove slamming Lucas against the wall. He doesn’t even think twice before his fist goes crashing into the bastard’s jaw.

And Hargrove... _loves_ it. King Steve, bared to the world, and ready to fight. He laughs wildly, anger bleeding past the glee, as they swing at each other with the kids shrieking in the background. Steve gives as good as he gets, but it’s like Hargrove’s not even feeling the blows raining down on him. He is completely insane, and he is not going to stop at Steve. 

Someone’s yelling, but Steve can’t even hear the words. There’s just the fear, the desperation, and _anger_ and he seizes on to it, drives it forward as he lashes out-

And Hargrove _stops_.

Just for a second. But he’s completely rigid, pupils blown out wide, and he stares at Steve as if he’s never seen him before. Steve doesn't understand - he didn't touch him- but the fear is in Hargrove now, sobbing through his skull; his heart is jackhammer-thumping, and part of Steve wonders at the strange certainty of that knowledge because he can barely hear his own heartbeat above his laboured breathing.

He tastes blood, copper-hot on his tongue.

Then Hargrove’s face twists into utter rage, and the plate comes crashing down. 

* * *

Steve swims slowly back to consciousness, and the first thing that he registers is what has to be one of the weirdest sensations in his life. He feels...light. Like the part of him anchored in the pink meat of his brain that’s _him,_ what his mom would call his soul, has been knocked out of its webbing and is drifting through his bones, like it might slip loose from him completely. 

But then he shifts, and the immediate next sensation is _hurt._ His head is throbbing madly, his limbs feel like they’ve been broken and reassembled, and his mouth is bitter with blood. And he feels tired, so tired, and ice-cold with determination, and knotted up with worry, and coolly focused, and strangely excited with just a niggling fear of-

No, that’s...that’s not right. Not _him._ He can barely tell what _is_ him above the flood of sensations, too loud like there’s a crowd of people roaring all around him. Too much, too much, he can’t tell where he begins and it ends, there’s just the fear and the focus and the confusion and he’s drowning in it-

_Plant your feet, Harrington._

He draws in a breath. Harrington, he - yes, that’s him. Steve. Steve who is hurt, exhausted, and just a little bit concussed. He can untangle that from the other presences in the car, that drum incessantly against his thoughts but are just different enough to pick out from them. Four, no _five_ of them around him; he can’t quite place how he knows that, because it’s just part of him, like knowing where his hands are in the dark. 

One of them feels closer than the others. Not just in sheer proximity, clumped up right next to his left side, but because the way it seems to almost reach towards him, flexing back and forth with excitement and building anxiety. He can actually feel it thrilling through his blood, along with the ripple of concern and a strange twist of guilt-

Steve’s eyelids struggle apart and he is not surprised to see Dustin staring at him. 

“Wha...happened?” he asks, tongue thick in his mouth.

Dustin airily waves a hand. Worry prickles his voice, but it's overlaid with buttery good humour now that Steve is conscious. Just the feeling of the shift (what shift, what is it, what’s _happening_ ) is enough to send vomit climbing up Steve’s throat. Or maybe it’s the way Dustin’s face is blurring in and out of focus, how his voice is oddly muffled like he’s talking at Steve from underwater. 

“S’all okay, buddy. You put up a good fight. Nearly had him. I mean, then he completely kicked your ass, but you tried.”

Steve can barely hear him. His head is throbbing and the lights flashing past - are they _moving?_ \- are making him want to hurl. He’s so sore and tired, and these _feelings,_ Dustin’s warmth and barely bridled energy, are thrumming into his skull, so warm and pulsing with life-

He doesn’t mean to do it. That’s the one thing he can tell himself later. Hadn’t known. It didn’t even feel like he was reaching to it, more just...opening himself up. Letting the dam collapse and the water rush in.

And rush in _something_ does, a rich flood that seems to ignite every cell in his battered brain. His head flares with pain but it almost immediately fades; he feels strangely cool and refreshed, like someone’s tipped a cool glass of water down his throat after he’s raced a marathon on a hot day. _Here you go, buddy. Drink up, you deserve it._

The ache in his limbs seems to have subsided, the blurriness in his vision has settled, and his thoughts don’t feel like they’ve been submerged in wet clay anymore. He looks up to Dustin, wanting to reassure him - and to demand to know exactly why he appears to be in a car with a bunch of miscreants he specifically told to _stay_ at home - and the words stop dead in his throat.

Dustin’s face is white, sheened with sweat, and his eyes stare blindly at a point beyond Steve’s head. And whatever it was that Steve could feel, the presence that was all bubbling concern and excitement and _Dustin_...seems to have faded, receding back into nothing like a draining tide. 

Steve’s mouth is dry. “Dustin? _Dustin?”_

The kid jerks like he’s been slapped and roughly shakes his head, hat almost sent flying onto Mike. “Whoa! So-sorry there. Must have spaced out for a sec there.”

He still feels oddly muted, but that means nothing right? Hargrove absolutely thrashed Steve, cracked him right across the head, and this is the result. He’s very nearly had his brain knocked clean from his skull and is still nursing the mother of all concussions. Something making him see, no feel, things that aren’t there. 

Dustin blinks down at him, and Steve is almost relieved to taste the ghosting sensation of worry across his teeth. “Dude, stay still - aw, man, your nose is bleeding again. Must’ve opened it up. Asshole really did a number on you, huh? Don’t worry, everything’s gonna be fine.”

Something creeps down Steve’s spine, some faint echo of familiarity. He opens his mouth-

Then Max speaks from the driver’s seat, and Steve abruptly realises he has much bigger problems to worry about. 

* * *

After it’s all over, Steve goes back to his house alone.

The chief hadn’t been happy about it. There had been words like _assault, trespass, concussion,_ and _hospital_ , all piling up to spell pretty big trouble for the absent Billy Hargrove. Steve wasn’t sure where the bastard had crawled off to after they left the house, but the kids hadn’t wasted much time in going to Hopper after everyone had come staggering back to the Byers’. 

Steve is almost impressed at how much white-hot anger can be concealed under such a steely professional face, especially when Hopper is almost wrung dry with exhaustion from whatever shit went down in closing that gate.

The thought of the gate sends a shiver through him as he walks through the front door into the empty darkness of the hallway. He thinks of the tunnels, the soft smell of rot, how it had felt to drop from the solid ground of his own world and land into the cold blackness of _other._ Vines sucking at the air, demodogs prowling through the silence. And seething through it all, that icy alien malice choking the air until he had nearly clawed the handkerchief off his face, desperate to puke just to get the feeling out of his skull. Only the knowledge that there’d be no one around to keep an eye on the brats if he passed out again had kept him going. 

Well, it doesn’t matter anyway. Let Hargrove stumble off to lick his wounds. Asshole’s had the win he wanted, and Steve isn’t so worried about him looking for another shot at the kids, not when Dustin has gleefully told him about his own sister nearly nailing Hargrove’s dick to the floor. 

Steve himself feels fine in any case. Energetic, even, which is fair considering he didn’t do half of what Hopper or Mrs Byers had to deal with. It was why he’d turned down the offer of a ride to the hospital, despite Mrs Byers’ shimmering anxiety as she checked him over, the reluctant twist to her lips when she agreed that the injuries weren’t as bad as all the blood and dirt had made out.

(Hargrove smashed a plate over his head. Hit him again and again when he was down, wouldn’t have stopped until he killed him. Steve was not fine when he woke up in that car. Things are not goddamn adding up.

Dustin-)

The important thing is that the kids are all safe. The chief dropped them all back home, hopefully with a story that’ll bail them out of any serious trouble. Not that the little shitheads didn’t deserve it for dragging him through the whole mess, but it was difficult to complain about any of it. Not when you’d seen Will Byers being carried in by his mother, limp with exhaustion but face completely peaceful. Or Mike and the girl Steve’s learned is Eleven, curled up tight in a corner together, fingers clutching at each other like they’d never let go.

The hushed quiet is a familiarity to Steve in his house but it still feels weird to hear his own footsteps echo as he crosses over into the kitchen after the blaze of noise he's just left. He gets himself a soda before slumping bonelessly onto a couch, staring up at the ceiling. He’s probably tracked a load of mud and worse over the floorboards, but he can’t bring himself to care. His parents won’t be back for another two weeks, maybe more, and the cold silence is a relief. Really. After being bathed in the warm, busy atmosphere of the Byers’s house, it’s nice to catch his breath, think things over.

Like the fact that he’s lost Nancy.

They haven’t had the official break-up talk, but he’d known as soon as he saw her walk through the door with Jonathan. There weren’t any grand declarations of romance or kisses exchanged; he thinks it might have been easier if there had been. But there had just been the way they fit together, their guarded movements so in sync, trust and love humming between the two of them like a live wire. Even the softness in Jonathan’s eyes as he watched Nancy crush Dustin’s squawking assertions that the call of science forbade them from lighting up that demodog’s corpse ASAP and what other cryo-whatsit environment had he been meant to find on such short _notice-_

It’s not...He’s not angry about it. Couldn’t ever be angry at Nancy Wheeler, who’s so fierce, brilliant and beautiful that locking eyes with her can feel like he’s having a stare-off with the sun. Or Jonathan, the mousy little geek that turned out to have instincts sharp as a bloodhound and a spine moulded from pure steel.

It’s more of a dull realisation, confirmation of what he already knew. He’s been chasing normality all this time, trying to go back to how things were when that door had shut long ago. He’d been running after shadows, while Nancy, the most real thing he’s ever known, had slipped away without him noticing. He’d thought that he could pile up everything he was at her feet, let it anchor her into place like it never had his parents, but it wasn’t as if the whole of Steve Harrington had ever amounted to much. 

And there was him, thinking that a shitty bouquet was somehow going to fix all that, wipe all his inadequacies away.

Maybe all that weird stuff he’s been feeling since waking up in the car, the blinding awareness of everyone around him with their life and their energy and their emotions screaming into his face...maybe that’s normal. Maybe that’s what people mean when they talk about being empathetic, observant, attentive to others. About knowing someone enough to realise that you could never measure up. Steve’s been walking around Hawkins all his life, completely oblivious to everything that mattered, and it’s just swell luck that the blow to fix it came too late to matter.

_This is all such bullshit._

He swears under his breath, getting to his feet. It’s been a long night, and he may as well drop into bed. Adrenaline can only keep you going for so long, and being as buzzed as he is makes him worry that he’s only heading for the worst crash possible and the maid’s going to come in to find he’s cracked his head passing out on the stairs. 

Sleep. Monsters might be real, but Steve can shut this night out, and when he wakes up tomorrow, these hallucinations or whatever will be gone and he can get himself moving again. Take an aspirin, drink some water and be right as rain for school on Monday. Or clean the floor, maybe even have a look at those applications collecting dust on his desk so he’s got something to show his mother, even if it’s a rejection.

He kicks his shoes off, breathing in the cool air. His head already feels clearer, standing here on his own with not a soul around. There’s not even a trace of his parents as he walks through the house to reach the first staircase, no ghostly impressions pressing down on his brain, and he tells himself that’s a good thing. Not like the Byers’ house, rife with excitement and warmth and love that makes him so dizzy he almost feels like he belongs there. There’s just a blankness that lets him calm down, sleep everything off and forget-

The light from the pool outside ripples over the wall and everything in Steve grinds to a halt. 

The pool. He stares at it through the window, and his throat is closed with terror. Water glimmering coldly under the moonlight, so clear and so completely still. He is paralysed by the sight of it. 

Blood billowing scarlet in the dark. A face unfurling into a nightmare. 

_NANCY-_

He stumbles back from the window, heart thumping so hard he thinks it’s going to crash through his ribs, plop wet and red right on his mother’s carpet. His hands are shaking so much that he almost rips the curtain clean off the wall as he drags it closed, plunging the room into darkness.

He fumbles blindly for the light, almost weeping with relief when he feels the switch click. There’s no one there and what had he been expecting? The house is empty. Steve is alone. 

The lights stay on. 


	2. Chapter 2

_...'re you?"_

_"...because 7- **8** -9..."_

" _... on't let Papa **hear** -"_

* * *

Steve spends the day after his hometown was saved from annihilation in a complete haze.

He sleeps for hours, periodically jerking awake soaked to the bone in sweat. The brilliant lines of sky visible through his blinds lightens from the pink of dawn to a pale blue, but he just lies on his side, watching the shadows creep across the floor without taking anything in. His vision is still filled with demodogs lunging across the scrapyard, the hideous slurp of their mouths as they bury their splayed heads in the wet mess of his guts. Of dirt raining down on the kids' heads as the tunnels seal around them and his lungs are choked with spores. 

Of his fingers sinking into the soft flesh of Dustin Henderson's face as his skull folds inwards, crumbling under Steve's touch like hollow plaster. 

He vaguely hears the sound of the phone going off, but he's already slipping back under. If it's his father, he'll probably be relieved to have missed Steve. 

It's late afternoon by the time Steve finally crawls off his mattress and slinks into his shower. Scraps of his last dreams are still flitting through his head - smoke and darkness and a voice that he guesses must be from the tunnels - but they melt away under the blast of water, as hot as he can bear it.

Steve tries to imagine that the dreams are sluicing down the drain, carried along by the dark mess of mud, blood and whatever those fucking weird feelings were from yesterday that he is not thinking about right now.

It doesn't help. 

Steve checks his reflection as he towels himself off. A little baggy-eyed, and there's a faint bruise shadowing his face from brow to nose, but all in all he doesn't look like someone who took on a pack of hellbeasts and got knocked out by a mulleted psycho for his trouble.

Henderson's pale face slips into his thoughts without permission and Steve drags a hand across his face, annoyed at his own worry. 

He switches off the lights one by one as he goes through each room, but keeps his eyes shut as he jerks the blinds open by the window facing the pool. It's beyond stupid, but Steve just helped save the town from multidimensional monsters, and it's not as if anyone's around to give him shit over getting chills from his own backyard. 

Naturally, cause the universe apparently loves nothing more than jerking the rug out from under Steve Harrington's feet, that's when the stifling stillness around him breaks as he _feels_ three very familiar presences drifting rapidly up the driveway. 

Steve's hand tightens around the blinds' cord. In the vast silence of his house, it had been easier to pretend that the weirdness was all in his head, a trick of the exhaustion and terror.

Now, as he tastes buzzing excitement and curiosity knotted up with concern outside his front door, he's forced to acknowledge that whether by head trauma or breathing in monster spores, _something_ happened to him that hasn't gone away. 

What does that mean? 

Action's always been easier than letting himself think, so Steve just whirls towards the door and yanks it open. Further down the drive, the kids' heads snap up from where they were chucking their bikes down by the grass. He's freaked out to realise that he knows who it is even before he sees their faces. Max, Lucas and-

Steve is flooded with dizzying relief as he meets the eyes of a very healthy-looking Dustin Henderson, and he can't even tell if its him or the kid it's coming from. He starts forward, blinking as they come trooping up the drive towards him. 

"What...what are you guys doing here?" 

Dustin gives him a look like he's asked where the sky is. "Looking for _you_ , dumbass."

"We'd have been by earlier if Dustin hadn't taken all day to get out of bed," Lucas adds as he ambles up to the door, ignoring Dustin's indignant yelp. He peers around Steve to the hallway behind him, eyes widening in the way that happens a lot when people see his parents' house.

Awe tinged in envy and bemusement prickles on Steve's skin, but Lucas' face doesn't pinch up the way that Carol and Tommy's used to whenever they had a real look at the Harrington lifestyle. Instead, he hooks a thumb through his belt loop and jerks his head to where Steve's car is sitting sleek and silent in the drive.

"Guess you're taking us then?" 

"Taking you where?" 

"To Hopper's place," Dustin chirps. "Mrs Byers took Will over and Mike's been there since stupid o'clock with El-"

Lucas drives an elbow into his side, flicking a panicked look at the empty windows of Steve's house.

"Over there with _absolutely no one else at all_ at the moment, right, Dustin?" 

Steve is about to tell him that his parents are thousands of miles too far away to overhear, but suddenly recalls the sour-faced men in suits that sat him down with Nancy and Jonathan the first time, the papers they'd had to sign sealing their mouths shut, and reconsiders. Perhaps Lucas's paranoia, sharp as it feels against Steve's skin, is something worth having.

Still. 

"You guys came all the way out here because you needed a ride?" 

He's not expecting the heated flash of hurt and indignation, and...concern?

Dustin's hands are on his hips. "No! It's a Party meeting, and as such, can't proceed without all members present and correct-" 

"Though a ride _would_ be nice," Max interjects helpfully. 

Steve is still processing this. "I'm...a Party member now?" 

"Initiated in by right of combat, and confirmed by democratic vote-" 

"Well, Mike hasn't-" 

"Max agreed and Will abstained due to not being there, he's outvoted and motion carried. _And_ we let him bring El in. Anyways, Steve, Mrs Byers was worried. You shouldn't have run off like that."

Steve blinks, feeling oddly flustered. Which is ridiculous, because he's an adult, practically, who's looked after himself and this house for longer than he can remember just fine on his own, and he doesn't have to justify himself to a curly-haired pipsqueak.

"I didn't run off-" 

"You didn't stay. You don't split up when you're in danger, but you went home after that psycho beat your face in, and I looked up what happens when you get knocked out in my mom's book before we came here, and your brain can get messed up if you're out for a few seconds, but you didn't wake up until we were in the _car_. You could have gone to sleep here with your brain leaking out."

Steve isn't one hundred percent sure if that last part is actually possible, but he can't seem to actually find a retort after Dustin's barrage. His throat's gone weirdly tight.

It's not...These feelings or whatever they are, they're proof that something got messed up in his head all right. They have to be.

Because otherwise, Steve has to think about the fact that there's stronger concern and warmth in Dustin Henderson's voice right now than he's ever felt coming off his own family, and that is not a thought he's willing to entertain right now. 

But it does remind him of everything that happened last night, the thing that's been sitting heavy at the back of his mind all day today. He affects a casual tone, but there's a brittle edge to it even he can hear. 

"Yeah well, you weren't looking so hot yourself, Henderson. Everything all right with you?" 

Dustin's face twists, and Steve really, really needs to get a handle on whatever this is soon, because even that slight brush of suspicion against his mind makes his whole body prickle, like someone's scraping nails down a blackboard. But there's a ripple of cold disquiet behind it, and Dustin's eyes flicker down even as he replies. 

"Dunno. I guess I just felt weird in the car? Because I was chasing Dart, and then the junkyard happened, and Billy beat the shit out of you, and then those gross shitty tunnels, and Dart, and...I felt like I could sleep forever after that, and then I basically did, and the dreams were _not_ fun. You were lucky, 'cause if I had been awake, I'd have dragged you to the hospital myself, idiot."

He would have done, a distant part of Steve realises. A part of Steve that isn't teetering on the edge of some kind of hysteria, about to confess to a kid he'd barely spoken to before yesterday that he's right, Steve's head got messed up and he doesn't know what's _happening_ -

"This is all really touching," Lucas calls out, "but, uh, we said to the Chief that we'd be there in about about fifteen, and I'm not sure he was joking about assuming the Gate was open again and coming out with the gun to find us if we didn't show up in time, soooo..."

Dustin looks hopefully at him. 

Steve sighs and reaches for his keys. 

* * *

The cabin is heaving with people, which is pretty impressive considering that Hopper must've guided them all past the endless toothy traps that look like they could stop a demodog swarm in their tracks. Steve's never really crossed the chief, even though some of Tommy's antics brought them pretty close at times, and he's suddenly very thankful for that. 

He's less thankful when he ducks through the open door and immediately finds himself face to face with Jonathan, sat with Joyce Byers on a musty sofa with one arm slung over the shoulders of his little brother. 

For a second, Steve doesn't even register the painful twist of seeing his fri- seeing Jonathan. Will Byers sits nested in a bundle of brightly-coloured blankets, drowning in a checked shirt about three sizes too big. His undereyes are bruised blue-black with exhaustion and his face still pale and pinched. Every shift in movement sends a throb of agony through the burn hidden neatly under layers of careful dressing, enough that Steve throws an arm out as Dustin and Lucas rush to hug him. 

And despite all that, what he feels from the kid - his soul, his aura, his presence, whatever kind of crap that Steve's mother's self-help books would call it - is as solid and unyielding as the bedrock beneath the cabin. There's a warm thrill of happiness at the sight of his friends, shimmering gratitude, and velvety contentment, all orbiting around a blazing determination that takes Steve's breath away. He's beaten and battered, but completely unbroken. 

Steve suddenly isn't surprised at all that Will survived weeks in the Upside-Down. He had been scared out of his goddamn mind when he dropped into the tunnels, drowning under that roiling cold hatred, in the rotting black thing holding the whole nightmare together. He can't imagine what it was like to be at the eye of the storm.

But clearly the Mind Flayer had never reckoned with any of the Byers family. 

Jonathan clears his throat. He'd risen up as the crowd of hellions thundered towards his brother, clearly mindful of the same injury Steve had noticed. Now obviously satisfied that the kid isn't about to be put back into hospital, he's looking at Steve meaningfully, like he wants to _talk_. 

Steve would personally rather square off with the demogorgon again, but no rabid horror helpfully appears as a distraction. He follows Jonathan over into the neat little kitchen area, noting with relief that Nancy isn't there, although he can see Mike huddled with Eleven in a cramped little corner overseen by a frowning Hopper. Small mercies. 

The kids are all jabbering on loudly enough to rival Hargrove's engine, but Jonathan still pitches his voice low as he leans in to Steve. Anxiety and awkwardness barbs his tongue, and Steve takes a shred of comfort in the fact he's not the only one finding this excruciating. 

"Look, Steve, Nancy and I...We never - behind your back, I mean...It was only after you two-" 

"It's fine," Steve interrupts immediately, wishing that he could just paint that on a sign and wave it around any time a conversation like this crops up. Not as _subtle_ as graffiti above a movie theatre (his insides still curdle with shame when he thinks about it) but at least then it would all be open and squared and he wouldn't have to feel this clammy guilt weighing against Jonathan's shoulders. 

"Nancy knows what she wants," Steve forces out, and doesn't acknowledge how the silent _and it's not me_ stings at the corner of his eyes. "I want her to be happy. So that's it. I'm not going to...to fight you, if that's what you're worried about. I'm cool with it."

Given that Jonathan kicked his ass quite thoroughly the last time Steve tried to pick a fight with him, he doubts that that was ever a serious worry for him. But some of the tension smoothes away from Jonathan's face, even when that strange bitter worry lingers.

"I just...I'm grateful, you know. Mike told me. About the tunnels."

Steve raises an eyebrow. "It was all that little shithead's idea. I just got dragged along with it."

Jonathan's laugh is quiet but genuine. It makes Steve weirdly lighter to hear it. "I felt that way too, for a lot of it. But Will, he...I don't think that things would have worked out if you guys hadn't drawn their attention away. So...thanks."

Part of Steve wants to ask exactly what went down before the Byers had come staggering in out the night, tearstained but triumphant with Will in their arms. There's horror knotted deep in Jonathan, fading but still raw in his eyes when they flicker to look at his little brother.

But Steve isn't that same asshole anymore who digs up someone's pain for the hell of it, so he nods his understanding and tries not to feel too relieved when Jonathan's distracted by a squabble between Dustin and Mike over the remote.

Max wanders over to the kitchen, gaze flickering in interest over the neatly-stacked packets and tiny pans. Steve senses the same kind of guarded longing he feels in himself - inducted into this mad little group but not entirely familiar enough with it yet to be fully in sync - and he offers her a tired smile.

"How're you holding up?"

She shrugs. "Not bad. The chief told my mom that there'd been an accident on the roads and we'd had to go to the station to tell him what we saw. Neil couldn't be too mad about that. Wasn't happy when Billy came back home though."

Steve frowns in concern. "He's not giving you any more shit, is he?" 

A smile plays on her lips. Right, the whole bat to the balls thing. Steve had forgotten just how fearless and terrifying Random Girl actually is. "No, not any more. I'll probably have to find another ride to school now, but it was so worth it."

"I could take you," a voice offers. It sounds remarkably like his.

Steve blinks, and his scrambled brain struggles vainly to catch up to his mouth. "That's - not that you have to, just-"

Max beams widely at him. Her surprise and delight are sugary-sweet, which seems quite off for a girl happy to muscle around in a junkyard. "Really? In your car?"

Before he can reply, Dustin lets out an outraged howl from across the cabin.

"His car? Awww, no fair - I was gonna ask first!"

"There's more than one seat, dumbass" Lucas calls out from where he's sprawled out on the floor. 

"Anyways, I call shotgun-"

"No you _don't_ Mike, you weren't even a part of this conversation-"

"He offered it to _me_ first, you jackass-"

Steve leans back against the counter, watching the room descend into a comfortable squabble. No anger here, or cold silences, just a cheerful roar that's oddly soothing to listen to. He thinks again of vacant hallways and calm pools, and stuffs down a feeling of gratitude towards Dustin Henderson that he will never, ever breathe a word on. 

At some point, Joyce Byers ducks out of a back room with more blankets for Will, offering Steve a quick smile as she slips past him towards the couch. It doesn't hide the great blue-black waves of grief billowing around her, and Steve can't quite hide his flinch. 

He knows all about crazy old Mrs Byers. Had been one of the kids gleefully sniggering behind Jonathan's back as Carol loudly aired her mom's gossip. Mrs Byers with the rundown house that a full time job can barely afford, the rabbity eyes, two kids and no father willing to stick around for either.

Mrs Byers who went through hell and back for her sons. Mrs Byers who begged to drive him to a hospital. Mrs Byers who had the person she loved quite literally ripped away from her and even now is putting on a wobbly smile as she quietly speaks to Eleven. 

Steve silently resolves to give the local funeral home a ring this week. He knows from Nancy which one they're likely to use, the same one Jonathan fought with to get a funeral cobbled together for his little brother. The allowance Steve's mom wires in each month like an apology may as well get used for something worthwhile. 

Will makes a joke, and Mrs Byer exchanges a smile with Jonathan that transforms them both. Her sadness and grief still sits on his tongue, heavy and numbing, but oddly...rich.

 _A meal_ , something whispers within him, but Steve shakes his head roughly. Definitely didn't get enough sleep last night. 

As if she's reading his thoughts, Eleven turns her head and blinks owlishly at him. He smiles uncertainly back at her. Her eyes are still smudged with eyeliner, but she's exchanged the jacket for a shirt that's too big for her, and her skinny arms and legs makes him think of a skittish spring fawn. There's an odd ring of familiarity in his head at the sight of her careful movements, the stark black numbers on her wrist, though Steve can't recall ever seeing her before she made her dramatic entrance saving everyone's asses. 

Eleven barely said a word amongst all the arguing, and at times her face had been so still that she reminded him less of a fawn and more of those porcelain figurines kept in one of his mother's cabinets. But in actual truth, she's more like the Satler quarry - a placid surface with currents churning deep below. Mike, Hopper, Joyce, even the other boys - she loves them so fiercely that it _hurts_. 

As he's driving the kids back that night, he asks Dustin exactly what her deal is. He can guess there's a thread between a girl who shuts down interdimensional gates and sends demodogs hurtling through glass without a sweat appearing out of nowhere, and the transformation of Hawkins into Ground Zero for every face-splitting nightmare the Upside Down has to offer, but the _how_ is kind of beyond him. 

So Dustin tells him. Tells him about a rainy night in the dark, the men in suits, the flying van. Tells him about a lab with little girls locked in tanks, where they cracked the door to the monster's lair wide open, a man with silver hair who crooned pride and affection at Eleven in a school filled with bloodied corpses. 

It's...it's a lot to take in. To understand.

That you can have kids, kids who are annoying and nerdish and fucking insane, kids that you shout at in one breath and wrap your fingers around a bat for in the next, because they're _kids_ , and you can plant yourself in front of them even though you're so scared you think you'll choke before the monster even reaches you, or...

Or you can pluck them from their parents and stick them in a lab in Hawkins, this safe little town with its low crime rates and proud HOA, where children can wander home alone at night. You can crack the world open so wide that a boy falls through the gap, and you send your men with their guns and lies and fucking stuffed-doll corpses to sew his friends' mouths up tight. You can take a scared little kid apart to see how they work, and then you can wind them up and send them out to where the monsters are waiting because it's not as bad as what's standing behind them. 

And Steve swears to himself there and then, that'll never fucking happen here again. Not to these kids, not on his watch. The kind of people who run the lab are hardly going to give a shit about a concussed teenager failing out of high school, but neither did the demogorgon. Steve, Hopper, Mrs Byers, Jonathan, Nancy - they understand that much about each other. If anyone wants to try fucking around in Hawkins again, with the kids, they'll do what needs to be done. 

Under his sleeve, his pulse throbs with anger, the veins stark against the bare, unmarked skin. 

* * *

Monday dawns like hell on earth. 

Steve's head is pounding before he even pulls into the school car park. That might have something to do with the fact that Hawkins High is heaving with so many people that his bones seem to shake with it before he's even pulled in to the school parking lot. It all rolls over him like some shitty tide that he can barely describe - bleary despair at the start of another week, burned-plastic anxiety that probably means someone forgot their math homework, whistling delight at the sight of a friend - until his nerves are screaming, and his hands are white-knuckled on the wheel.

"-and we had to reupholster the couch, but Mews had clawed it first anyway, so it was a total overreaction to, you know, ban Game Night completely, but Mike's mom was still cool with it-"

"-because I didn't tell her _why_ we got banned from holding it at yours-"

Or it might be a fact that, for reasons entirely unknown to Steve, his _very nice_ car is currently crammed full of children. Children who, as he listens with growing disbelief at the exploits they got up to when the monsters _weren't_ around, are a clear menace to life, limb and ancient couches, _why_ had he agreed to let them into his car again?

"But that curiosity door got well and truly burned shut, so you don't need to worry about that happening at yours-" 

Steve blinks, and then remembers a suggestion involving his house, Friday night, and whatever nerd shit this lot normally cook up in Nancy's basement. He scowls into the mirror as he begins backing the car into a space. 

"I didn't say yes yet-" 

" _Yet_ ," says Mike with a sharklike grin. 

"Eyes on the road, Steve" Max chirps, which is fucking rich considering that her driving makes Billy Hargrove look like a poster boy for road safety. 

"C'mon, Steve - Mike put together this whole new campaign, and we've got the character sheets for you and Max."

Max is shotgun, as the only person actually invited into the car, which conveniently lets Steve exchange a look with her of mutual bewilderment of exactly how life left them facing the prospect of a Demons and Dragons night, or whatever other nerdish stuff Mike stores up as a rite of passage for anyone not smart enough to flee from his little gang. 

The bell rings and the kids hurriedly spill out towards the middle school. Steve yells a reminder to Dustin not to forget his backpack, and then a warning that none of them had better have any afterschool club shit going on because if they think he's waiting past three-

There's a chorus of goodbyes, and Dustin turns around to yell back his own reminder for Steve to not hit his head on anything else today. 

Steve's traitor lips actually twitch up at the brat before he smoothes them out into a scowl. He ignores the curious looks from some of the crowd milling around the lot and straightens up with a deep breath.

Nightmare's over. Back to normality.

Except things are just never that easy. Back of the room in second period, and Steve is already struggling. He concentrates on the grains of his desk, the back of his hands, the stained ceiling tiles to block out the rush of feelings that batter at him from all sides.

It's all right when everyone's calm, or focused - like being surrounded by radios with the volume turned low. He knows what the noise means, but he can tune it all out.

But when there's something to spike things up - like, say a surprise pop quiz, _thanks so goddamn much, Mrs Click_ \- it's like getting knocked off his heels. The surge of cold anxiety, pink-grey tint of indignity and shudder of dismay, punctured with a fizz of smugness from Marty Steers because of course that asshole knew it was coming, is enough to make him physically shake. 

From the side, he sees Laurie Goddard shoot a look at him behind her curtain of hair and a chime of concern rings out against his teeth. It's nice of her to notice let alone care, because Steve really could have found a less dickish way to break-up with her back before Nancy, but yeah, doesn't help with the whole sensation of drowning in his classmates. 

Right. _Right_. Steve's got to get a hold of this. His heart is thudding so wildly he thinks he'll be sick from it, and he focuses on that first, trying to calm down like Nancy showed him once.

He closes his eyes and counts to four, breathing deep and slow. He tries to picture that kind of heavy calm when you can relax under it, the kind to chase the panic from his veins and loosen his lungs up again, concentrates only on that he doesn't have to think about anything else. 

And surprisingly enough, it works. The clamour dies down to a muted buzz, and Steve slumps in his seat in relief, feeling like his throat's just unknotted itself. There's no longer a faceless roar bearing down on him; he can actually pick out the individual presences around him. People must be relaxing as the papers are passed around, there's not even a prickle of nerves on his skin now-

And then Steve realises. The calm blooming across the room, the sudden hush of panicked whispers, the way Brian Turner's pencil is no longer tapping a frantic rhythm on his desk. How he can feel his own will drifting through the room, spreading quiet like ink in water

It's _him_. 

Steve's not just blocked their emotions out. He's changed them. Took control of them, turned them into something else and sent it right back at everyone. 

The tunnels. Something got into Will Byers from the Upside Down, took root and spread. What if.... _what if..._

"Mr Harrington?" 

Steve accepts the paper, barely registering Clicker's dry impatience. He forces the thought away with an effort that takes more out of him than a swing from his bat ever did, forces some of that calm back into him. Everyone's heads are bent over their work and the only person Steve's in charge of at the moment is himself. He's being stupid. No monsters here. 

His mouth tastes of rust. Steve ignores it as he scratches his answers down.

* * *

Steve's bruises, already far less than a plate to the face would warrant, have faded considerably since he woke up in the car that night. Still noticeable if you really peer at his face, but easy enough for everyone to write off as him getting shitfaced and walking into something. Wouldn't be the first time. 

But then Billy Hargrove strolls in three hours late with a swollen eye and cut lip, and people are eyeing Steve speculatively as gossip suddenly starts flying through the halls. 

Steve Harrington and Billy Hargrove had a fight. Steve and Billy had a fight, and it looks like Billy lost _bad_. 

Steve hasn't got a fucking clue which shithead started that one, because he's not said a word and Jonathan and Nancy have kept to their own silent bubble since they arrived at school together (and if _that_ piece of news hasn't dumped the final chug of gasoline on the funeral pyre of Hawkins High's own King Steve then Carol's really lost her touch). 

It's not even close to the truth anyway. Even if Billy hadn't cracked Steve out of the fight with Mrs Byers' ceramic, Steve was on the defensive for most of the fight. And his memory is a little fuzzy thanks to aforementioned plate, but he's pretty sure he didn't split Billy's lip so hard that all the girls crowding out of French class are cooing in sympathy.

Asshole probably got a bar fight or something to cheer himself up after Max ruined his big moment. Steve isn't going to waste any more energy on Hargrove, though part of him is braced for the possibility of him gunning for a second round. Someone who actually gives a fuck about being top dog over the likes of Tommy and Reed probably won't be happy that the credit for attempted murder went the wrong way.

Thankfully, the final bell rings before Steve even sees so much of a flicker of a mullet. He's leaning back against a locker, waiting with Jonathan for Nancy to finish putting her books away, because even if the sheer awkwardness between them feels like it could curdle the air Nancy still needs to speak to Mike before Steve drops the hellions off at the arcade and Steve's not petty enough to flounce out on his own to wait at a comfortable distance.

And...it's nice. In a weird way. To have two other people that can appreciate the insanity of another day at Hawkins High like the world wasn't ending yesterday. To be able to have someone else not cheerfully oblivious to the fact that only a psychic preteen had stood between them and their loved ones becoming demodog chow. 

It feels kind of like the good days before everything had slipped through his fingers - back when he'd come swinging out of last period, hand-in-hand with Nancy, and lean in by Jonathan's car for a catch-up. Not as often as they could have done, but sometimes when someone had needed to bitch and things skirted a bit close to the line of their signed silences, they'd even take a ride out together.

Steve had been clinging so close to normal then, to pretending none of it happened, but he'd remembered. Three monster-hunters, talking shit and burning rubber, and it felt like there was nothing in the world but the three of them. 

Strange how you can miss someone when they're still standing close enough to touch.

No sooner has the thought crossed Steve's mind when he hears that particular little snigger that he hasn't missed at all, despite hearing it nearly every day since he was five. He doesn't even need to look to know whose spite and jealousy is now brushing nettles over his skin.

"For God's sake," Nancy mutters under her breath. 

Steve doesn't even bother to look over to Carol's little huddle with Tina and Sarah as he idly glances up the hallway. He doesn't need to to see the ugly haze boiling over behind the sickly-sweet facade at the sight of the three of them, a kind of orange-brown that unsettlingly reminds him of an infected wound. 

"-well, I don't know if you heard about her _party trick_ -" 

It's been a long time since he called Carol and Tommy friends, but Christ, even his five-year-old self would never taken the hand of the tomboy who could spit twice as far as any other kid if he could see underneath to what Steve can now.

And there, just further down in the crowd, leaning against the wall without a care in the world with Heather and Nicole fawning around him while Ethan and Tommy clap his shoulder in barely-concealed envy and crow about some shitty game. Billy Hargrove, looking far more smug than someone sporting a perfect shiner has any right to. 

Something in Steve's stomach tightens

He hasn't forgotten that moment of heart-stopping fear when he'd torn up the steps after Billy and heard the kids screaming inside. Lucas pinned gagging against the cabinet. He hadn't needed whatever fucked-up brain injury the plate had produced to know exactly what Billy would have been willing to do. 

But hey. What's a little assault and murder of minors between friends? Tommy would probably be disappointed he wasn't invited. 

Hargrove's eyes flicker up to meet his, and-

No anger. Well, not like it had been at the house, hot and wild and so pumped up on the thrill of smashing Steve to a pulp that he'd half thought the guy was on something. Perhaps Max's _talk_ is the reason why what's there now is colder and bitter and tamped down so hard that you'd never be able to see it in the lazy grin on Hargrove's face. 

But that flash of keen, calculated interest, so focused that it seems to _burn_ on Steve's skin-

Nicole laughs at one of Ethan's gestures and Hargrove turns his head, Steve forgotten. Steve comes back to himself with a shake, abruptly furious with himself for even getting unnerved. Let the dickhead do what he wants. If he tries any shit with the kids again, well, there's already a cell lined up at the station with Hargrove's name on it. Steve might have underestimated the sheer insanity lurking behind that shitty attempt at a mustache, but he's pretty sure it's got jackshit on whatever it is that fuels Chief Jim Hopper. 

"Ready to go?" 

Nancy smiles wryly at him as she shuts her locker with a firm click, Jonathan already falling in step next to her. Behind them, Carol's frantic mutterings to a bewildered Tina have lost all subtlely, not that it makes any difference to their target. Boredom flat and cool like a pane of glass is all that Steve can register from Nancy. 

He grins casually as he can at her, trying to emulate it. Dropping the kids at the arcade suddenly doesn't seem so unappealing. He needs...he needs to think about a few things now and maybe before stepping up to the cliff-edge of actually going to Hopper or Mrs Byers, before voicing the words to make it real, he'll-

"Guess that's why poor _Barb_ ran off - her little girlfriend wouldn't let her watch."

Weirdly enough, the sharp crack of grief and guilt from Nancy slams into him before the words have even settled in his ears. Her face is drawn tight as a drumskin and Jonathan reaches out a hand, but Steve has already spun on his heel. Carol's thrill and satisfaction at finally getting a reaction salts the air, but behind it, _behind_ it...

All that pulsing life, warm on his skin from feet away, the energy humming in the coil of her brainstem behind the flicker-static buzz of her thoughts, what he instinctively understands as the living essence of _Carol_ , and Steve-

Steve flings it all away from him with a choked gasp as he rocks back on his feet. No one notices; they're too busy staring in confusion and amusement as Carol flees through the tittering crowds with tears streaming down her face, chased by a spill of horror and disgust that he fights wildly to claw back to himself. 

"Steve?" Nancy breathes. 

Something trickles down Steve's lip, warm and sticky. He wipes it away with the back of his hand and somehow isn't surprised to see the skin smeared red.

This...this is a problem. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the wait everyone - the pandemic ran things pretty ragged for a while and finding spare moments to type was a task and a half. 
> 
> But I'd love to hear your thoughts on the chapter and will hopefully see you sooner next time!

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this is my first time dipping my toes in the Stranger Things fandom, with a plot I'm aware has been used before but I can hopefully put my own spin on. I'd love to hear what you liked, what you didn't, any glaring mistakes or anything else you'd like to comment on!


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